Queen's Brian May Explains Why He 'Never Liked' David Bowie Collab 'Under Pressure'

In 1981, Queen joined forces with David Bowie to create “Under Pressure,” one of the band’s most recognizable songs and an inspiration for future hits like Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” At the time, both Bowie and Queen were some of the biggest names in rock, so a collaboration between the two was bound to be a smash. 

Freddie Mercury and David Bowie were entertainment powerhouses at the height of their fame, but their electric creative chemistry became a headache for Queen guitarist Brian May while making “Under Pressure.” He reflected on the creation of the track in a new interview for Total Guitar magazine.

“It was all done spontaneously in the studio very late at night after we had a meal and a lot of drinks,” he recounted, per Guitar World. “And it was a pretty heavy backing track. When it gets to ‘Why can’t we give love?’ we were all working on it together, and it sounded like The Who. It sounded massively chord-driven. And I was beaming because I liked The Who.”

While the draft of the song sounded good to May, he learned that Bowie had other plans. “I remember saying to David, ‘Oh, it sounds like The Who, doesn’t it?’ He says, ‘Yeah, well it’s not going to sound like The Who by the time I’ve finished with it!’ You know, in a joking kind of way. But he didn’t want it to be that way,” he remembered. 

Needless to say it turned out to be a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen situation. “It was very difficult… because we all had different ideas of how it should be mixed,” May recalled. Rather than try to keep his heavy backing guitar on the song, May conceded and let Mercury and Bowie duke it out. 

“I think it’s probably the only time in my career I bowed out, because I knew it was going to be a fight. So basically it was Freddie and David fighting it out in the studio with the mix. And what happened in the mix was that most of that heavy guitar was lost,” May said. “And even the main riff, I played that electric, pretty much in the sort of arpeggiated style which I do live now. But that never made it into the mix. What they used was the acoustic bits which were done first as a sort of demo.”

As a result, May wasn’t satisfied with the final product, though he acknowledged its global impact that still remains today. 

“I never liked it, to be honest, the way it was mixed,” May confessed. “But I do recognize that it works. It’s a point of view, and it’s done very well. And people love it.” When he performs the song with the remaining Queen members today, it’s more in line with May’s original vision. “We play it quite a bit different live,” he said. “It is a lot heavier and I think it benefits from it.

“I mean, David was an awesome creative force. But you can’t have too many awesome creative forces in the same room,” he added. “It starts to get very difficult! Something has to give.”